Remember that one day when you could wake up without an alarm? When you would get your favorite bowl of cereal and sit between the hours of 8 and 12? This is a blog dedicated to the greatest time of our childhood: Saturday mornings. The television programs you watched, the memories attached to them, and maybe introducing you to something you didn't realize existed. Updated every weekend.

It’s hard to imagine a time for LEGO before everything truly was awesome, but
in the early part of the 21st century the company was on a steady
decline towards bankruptcy. The market was changing and LEGO was slow to adapt.
It began making moves to try and correct this by bringing in a new generation
of innovative designers to oversee their set creations and began acquiring
licenses to hit franchise properties like Star Warsand Harry Potter.

Allegra with the map.

In 2001, LEGO decided to enter the
growing build-a-figure market by creating a toyline tying into and financing
a new upcoming science fiction program: Galidor:
Defenders of the Outer Dimension. Created by Thomas W. Lynch, the
series focused on average teenager, Nick Bluetooth (named for Danish king Harald Bluetooth and
originally named Christian by Lynch, played by Matthew Ewald), who had been
having strange dreams about a completely different place. He was given an
electronic map that led him to a spaceship called the Egg that took him and his
best friend, Allegra Zane (Marie-Marguerite Sabongui), to the Outer Dimension—the
place from Nick’s dreams. It turned out that Nick’s father, Samuel (Randy
Thomas), had created the Egg and had adventures in the Outer Dimension where he
met Nick’s mother, Queen Riana (Tara Leigh). He was brought to the Outer
Dimension to help stop the invasion forces of the sinister Gorm (performed by Derrick
Damon Reeve and Steven P. Park, voiced by Ian Finlay), a former royal advisor
who was banished and spent his time amassing a huge army and conquering various
worlds; leaving a wasteland in his wake. However, in order to conquer Galidor,
Gorm must find and assemble a shattered key that will open a gateway to that
world.

Promo shot of Euripidies, Allegra, Nick, Jens and Nepol by the Egg.

Aiding Nick was Jens (performed by
Sam Magdi, voiced by Michael O’Reilly), the chief royal scientist whose
original plant body was destroyed by Gorm resulting in his being placed into a
robot body; Euripides (performed by Jeff Hall, voiced by Georges Morris), a frog-like
creature called an Amphibib who was the royal scholar capable of using
telekinesis and generating heat through his staff; and Nepol (performed by
Claude Giroux, voiced by Walter Massey), a blue-furred Siktari that was
shrunken by Gorm and could run at great speeds or freeze things with his spear.
Riana would appear in holographic messages only Nick could see to provide cryptic
guidance on his journey. Eventually, Lind (Karen Cliche), a Galidorian that
could dissolve into a purple gel and was trained by Gorm to take his place in
the royal court, would join the team. Aiding Gorm was Tager, a being with mind
control abilities; Caliphonic, the leader of the Aquarts; and Bala (Sean
Devine), a cyborg bounty hunter.

Gorm’s primary army was composed of Boges; human-sized bug-like
creatures that could fly.

Gorm.

In the Outer Dimension, Nick
discovered he gained a special ability: the ability to glinch. Glinching meant
he was able to channel an energy that allowed him to shapeshift parts of his
body to resemble those he had come in close contact with, temporarily gaining
whatever skill was associated with them (such as super strength with Jens’
robotic arms). Gorm also possessed this ability, but to a lesser extent than Nick
necessitating his use of a device to increase his power. This glinching ability
was used to explain the core aspect of the toyline, where the character’s body
parts could be swapped for others. While Nick and Gorm, and to an extent the
Egg, which was revealed to be partially sentient, were the only ones on the
show who could do this, all of the characters in the toyline were able to be
mixed and matched. It was a simplified version of their more-successful BIONICLEline.

Unfortunately, Galidor failed
on two fronts. Not only did the show underperform in the ratings, but the
toyline was selling poorly. This was due in large part to LEGO’s miscalculation
of making the toys incompatible with other LEGO sets and doing away with the construction
style they were best known for. Only 15 of 17 planned sets were made before
sales saw the line cancelled. Without the toys to draw revenue from and the
ending of Fox Kids, Galidor ended on
a cliffhanger after two seasons; which aired without a break in between. Reruns
would air on ABC Family following its
conclusion.

To promote the series, a set of five
toys and a mini
comic book were included with McDonald’sHappy Meals that year. Nick, Jens,
Euripides, Nepol and Gorm were all present with fully interchangeable parts.
LEGO also published a single issue for a proposed comic book series, Galidor:
Danger in the Outer Dimension. A poorly-received tie-in video game was
developed by Tiertex
Design Studios for the Game Boy Advance and
released by LEGO Interactive and
Electronic Arts in October of 2002. Asylum Entertainment was developing a
version for PlayStation 2,
GameCube and PC with an
early 2003 release date, but financial instability caused them to cancel the
game and lay off the development team. A flash game was also featured on the
Fox Kids website. One of the toys, the Kek Powerizer,
featured a built-in game that could be controlled by moving the toy’s limbs in
certain ways. It also had a special sensor that allowed it to interact with the
show when it was on by playing sounds, screen animations and activating new missions
for the game.